The Inner Studio - Riverside Architectural Press

PART FOUR | INNER KNOW-HOW
mentioning this right away because criticism and judgment are
valuable and necessary tools during the development of a project,
yet they have the power to completely inhibit creativity. While
design is best nourished by generous helpings of freedom and
imagination, what is the right role of criticism?
First we need to look at the difference between inner and outer
critics. The inner critic is the way we talk to ourselves, using
phrases like “I’m no good...I can’t do this...I have nothing to
say...my ideas are never worth saying....” These are words that we
may have learned from critical teachers or parents when we were
growing up. The judgments and negativity expressed will stop us
in our tracks. The reason they continue to have power over us is
that we still believe that these comments are true. They remind us
of what it was like to hear these comments as children, and the
vivid sense of hurt or anger or sadness that we felt then is activated
and overwhelms any creative impulse. Obviously, when we are
caught in the child and we experience inner judgment and negativity,
we will not be able to make wise decisions.
The way to free ourselves from the negative power of judgment
is to become conscious of the comments, perhaps write them out
and see if we can find their source. Where did we hear these
words? Who said them to us? The very act of writing them out and
analyzing them puts us in the position of being the adult. It is the
adult part of us that is capable of seeing through these opinions
and discovering what is true. The outer critic will use the same
messages and, though we are free to respond, it is usually much
too difficult because the comments trigger hurtful memories from
long ago. Rather than being destructive, criticism should serve the
development of design through constructive comments that do not
undermine the designer. The questioning, evaluating, discussing,
and analyzing should help the latent qualities of the design emerge
and bring out the highest and best aspirations of the project.
Constructive criticism moves the design toward a more organized,
advanced, refined, and clear state so that it can become more
useful to its future users and more satisfying to its designer.
Criticism becomes a destructive experience when an unconscious
desire for perfection or power overwhelms the conscious
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